Documents / FOIA release

/specialCollection/MissileGap/1992/1992-04-01.pdf

Central Intelligence Agency · 406 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is a CIA History Staff monograph by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, published in Washington in 1992 and approved for release in 2011. It covers the CIA's manned overhead reconnaissance program from 1954 to 1974, which developed and flew the U-2 and the A-12 OXCART. It traces the U-2's development, the overflights of the Soviet Union, the downing of Francis Gary Powers on 1 May 1960, and later operations. One section is titled U-2s, UFOs, and Operation BLUE BOOK.

  • p. 91 …Early in the program Bissell and Ritland had foreseen such an emergency and, with the cooperation…
  • p. 95 …of their mission kept the level of cooperation high. The group always attempted to reach a…
  • p. 143 …deception project since its early days, he cooperated reluctantly because he disliked adding attachments that made…
  • p. 196 …as possible while giving the appearance of cooperating with his cap- tors. To extract the maximum…
  • p. 287 …by Edgerton, Germeshausen & Grier (EG&G) in cooperation with the Scientific Engineering Institute at a small…
  • p. 302 …Halaby cooperated fully with the Agency and personally briefed all FAA regional chiefs on how to…
  • p. 334 …The cooperation between the Agency and the Air Force that began with the U-2 and…
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research results were tested by another firm known as
Edgerton, Germeshausen & Grier (EG&G), which was also composed
of MIT faculty members. Under an Air Force contract to evaluate ra-
dars, EG&G operated a small testing facility
Although Kell))naa peen
closely involved with the radar deception project since its early days,
he cooperated reluctantly because he disliked adding attachments that
made his aircraft less airworthy. (Johnson's dislike of the antiradar at-
tachments was reflected in the unofficial nickname for aircraft that
had been so modified—"dirty birds.") After Lockheed mechanics
had mounted the various RAINBOW devices on the prototype U-2, a
Lockheed test pilot would fly the plane over EG&G's1
installation. This was little more than a series of rAuar sets ana a
trailer containing instrumentation. EG&G technicians could thus re-
cord and evaluate the U-2's radar returns as it traversed a specified
course over their facility!'
This method of testing radar-deceptive modifications proved
both time consuming and dangerous. During a test flight on 2 April
1957, the -wallpaper" modification acted as insulation around the
not far from
" References to EG&G programs for the U-2 are contained in the later Convair contracts
for Projects FISH and KINGFISH, OSA records 'TS Codeword).
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 406 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.